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Social Proof.

Why Other people tell us what to think

By Charles LeonPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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NO. 3 SOCIAL PROOF

Extracted from: Robert Cialdini – Influence. 6 Weapons of Influence.

If you ever thought that “liking” or using a heart emoji was something new and only invented and used by millennials you’d be wrong! In the 1820s two famous Paris Opera “habitues” (regular Opera-goers), Saunton and Porcher, created a phenomenon called claquing. They organized themselves under the title L’Assurance des Success Dramatique (assurance of dramatic success) and they leased themselves and their cohorts to enthusiastically support an opera or theatre performance by their rapturous applause and cries of “bravo”. This, they assured the Theatre owners, would guarantee the enjoyment, reception, and success of any performance. And they were right! By 1830 the practice of spiking your audience with “Calqueurs” was standard practice. From laughter to crying and “spontaneous” applause, the “chef de claque” and his team would lead the unsuspecting audience into the same emotions and enthusiasm and thereby ensuring that when hey left the theatre they would spread the word. This is the power of social proof at it’s manipulative best.

Applaud when prompted

And don’t think that we don’t fall for the same tricks now. We do. Canned laughter that accompanies most TV sitcoms and comedies is exactly that. Encouraging you to join in. Even if we know what is happening, we are still subject to an automatic social reaction, laughter isn’t something you do alone. Laughter is a social process and TV executives know this and use it to increase our perceived enjoyment.

Social proof is highly persuasive. When we see others doing something, particularly when it is a lot of others, we tend to feel that if that many people are doing it, it must be right, and often we follow. Social proof is one of the means we use to determine what is probably correct.

Think about it! When you go to a bar (hopefully again soon) and there is a jar for tips which has already been “salted” with some change and notes, this encourages you to think that if people have already given, this must be the right thing to do, and you give. Likewise, buskers will often “prime” their hat with a few coins to encourage you to think that this is the norm. In churches, the collection is passed around and rarely starts out empty. Clubs often slow down entry into their establishment and create queues so that people will believe that this is a hot-ticket and will want to be part of it.

When we watch adverts they will often say, “this is the largest selling…” “This is the fastest-selling…” this is to encourage you to feel that if everyone is doing it, I should do it too. Most of us are persuaded by the actions of others. But there is a dark side to this too and it’s called “Pluralistic Ignorance”

PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE. (BYSTANDER INACTION)

Let’s take the case of Catherine Genovese. In 1964 in New York a woman in her late twenties was on her way home when she was murdered. What was unusual in this murder was that Catherine Genovese screamed out several times and was heard by many people, yet no one came to her assistance, 38 of her neighbors heard and watched her demise from their apartments and did nothing, and remained silent.

Catherine Genovese Murder - Bystander Innaction

A simplistic explanation would be that in New York, at that time, murders were not unusual, and people just didn’t want to get involved. People had become selfish and insensitive. Or the reality of living in a huge metropolitan society had depersonalized urban life. But, Latane & Darley, psychology professors in New York had another explanation. People didn’t help, precisely because there were so many observers.

In situations of uncertainty, we have a natural tendency to look around at the actions of others for clues as to how we should behave. We learn from the way others are reacting. We all look for “social” evidence of how to behave. Because we prefer to look poised and unflustered when amongst others, we are likely to search for evidence from those around us. This is called “Pluralistic Ignorance”, each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. This doesn’t mean that some of us wouldn’t react differently and realize the situation, but more often than not, particularly in less critical situations, we will use our observations of others to confirm how we should react.

Latane and Darley, went on to test their theory of pluralistic ignorance by asking students in New York to stage an epileptic fit in the street. The student having the fit was helped 85% of the time when there was a single bystander, but only 31% of the time when there were more than 5 bystanders present. Obviously, the presence of others reduced helping to shameful levels.

Was the student just drunk? Was he a drug addict? Was he homeless? In situations of uncertainty, we look to see how others are dealing with the situation and we adjust our behavior accordingly.

Epilleptic Fit or Drunk?

In another experiment carried out in New York and Toronto with smoke seeping out from under a doorway. Where lone individuals passed the scene 75% reported the smoke, but when there were more than three-person groups, the smoke was reported only 38% of the time. Where they planted students into a small group to ignore the smoke, then the remaining single person only 10% of the time did they take action. It seems that pluralistic ignorance is strongest when it is amongst strangers. City-dwellers are more likely to find themselves in a group of strangers and therefore will look to see what social proof there is for them to take action in uncertainty.

In situations of uncertainty, we will often defer to the next level of affirmation, we will look for people who are most similar to us.

In another experiment carried out by Columbia University psychologists, researches placed a wallet on the ground in various locations in Manhattan to see what would happen. The wallet contained $2 in cash, a $26.30 check, and information with the name and address of the owner. They also put in a letter which indicated that the wallet had been lost twice. The letter was from the person who found the wallet and was intending to return it. This was, obviously a well-intentioned person who had lost the wallet himself whilst going to return it. The researchers wanted to know if the new finders would return the wallet to the original owner.

Columbia experiment

However, the letter was written in two different versions. The first was in standard English, the second was written in broken English by what seemed to be a recently arrived foreigner. Only 33% of wallets were returned when the finder was dissimilar from the person in the letter to the new finder, but 70% were returned when the finder was similar to the letter writer. This suggests that we will use social proof to decide our behavior, but we will especially take note when we view others as similar to ourselves.

There is a very dark side to social proof. It’s something called the Werther Effect.

THE WERTHER EFFECT.

In 1774 Goethe published a novel entitled Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther) in which the young hero, Werther commits suicide, which sparked a wave of emulative suicides across Europe. The effect was so powerful that several countries banned the book.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Professor David Phillips of the University of California at San Diego decided to track this effect in modern times. His research indicated that immediately following a front-page suicide story, the suicide rate increases dramatically in the areas it had been publicized. Within two months of every front-page suicide story, an average of fifty-eight more people than usual committed suicide. Usually copycat suicides. The same principle seemed to follow in car suicides and airplane suicides. Phillips data analysis found a direct correlation between self-inflicted crashes and suicides and a rise in similar deaths in similar situations. Again we see that people are most influenced by people we perceive to be similar to us.

Which brings us the curious incident of Jonestown. The People’s Temple was founded by Reverend Jim Jones, who created a small cult, originally in San Francisco, and then moves to a jungle settlement in Guyana, South America.

In 1978 910 members of the cult committed suicide, willingly and consensually. Jones had decided to control the end of his cult in his own way. He gathered his entire community around him and issued a call for each person's death. The first response was from a young woman who calmly drank the poison and gave her child the same, went out to the fields, sat down, and died. Others followed although a handful did escape. Within this quasi-religious community of unquestioning faith, the social norm became the act of suicide. The had lived in total isolation from the rest of the world in a hostile jungle environment, where there was total devotion to Jones.

Jonestown, Guyana - Clearing the Bodies

In uncertainty, people look to the actions of others t guide their own actions. What was right for a member of the community was determined to a disproportionate degree by what other community members, influenced by Jones, did and believed. When the first woman calmly took the poison others adopted the same behavior. This was large-scale pluralistic ignorance. Leaders of this kind use the principle of socially proof by arranging group conditions so that behavior is set to maximally work in their favor. Conditions of uncertainty and exclusive similarity were transformed into a herd mentality.

When we’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a highway and someone changes lane ahead of us, we think “he must know something” and we change lanes. This is the power of social proof. When we see on Facebook 10,000 “likes” we add our like too. This is the power of social proof. We laugh when others are laughing, we applaud when others applaud, we cheer when others cheer. This is the power of social proof.

So, from the Paris Opera, through canned laughter to copycat suicides we can see the power of social proof. Whether it’s testimonials or simply a sense of belonging we are influenced by social proof. When we hear the average man on the street endorsing this product or opinion we need to be aware that this is being used to influence our behavior. When we see the crowd behaving as one unit, we need to be aware that this influences our behavior. When we are uncertain, or when uncertainty is created, we look to others for affirmation of how we should behave.

AFTER ALL, A MILLION PEOPLE CAN’T BE WRONG! CAN THEY?

6 WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE:

Reciprocation,

Commitment and Consistency,

Social Proof,

Liking,

Authority,

Scarcity

psychology
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